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Friday, 1 September 2017

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND

Never having lived under an authoritarian, nationalist
regime, it is easy for me to say, as a British person, that I am not a fan of
fascism.

In modern history, Britain has never had a regime that took
itself seriously enough for anything remotely fascist to work - the British
national character, or our idea of one, likes to take overly successful or
self-important people down a peg, so the personality cult found around many fascist
leaders cannot materialise. I need not go over (again) the shortcomings of
Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin because they are both apparent,
and well known to all of us, but those shortcomings mean they do not make the
grade as a fascist leader – no, they’re not good enough for that either.

Replacing the existing British political system with fascist
control would be too radical, and far too much work. Groups like the British
National Party are tiny, but no “centre ground” party exists either, because
the Conservative and Labour parties always vie for control of the middle ground
in general elections. Dragging everyone towards the far right really requires a
decisive, seismic event, and even the Second World War couldn’t manage that.

In the absence of a personal test, I agree with a passage
often used to confirm British hostility to Fascism. It is found in the 1938
novel “The Code of the Woosters,” by P.G. Wodehouse, where Bertie Wooster
repudiates Roderick Spode, leader of the Blackshorts. Spode is an analogue of
British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, who was imprisoned by the British
Government, with other far-right sympathisers, in 1940:

“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have
succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by
going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting
‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you
make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that
frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff
see such a perfect perisher?’”

While the writings of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse embody the
manners, the thoughts and the language of a Britain now gone, the sheer
British-ness of the man himself got him into trouble. He initially did not
escape his home in France when the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, and was later
captured after making an attempt. The following year, interred in Berlin, Wodehouse
was made to broadcast five radio talks, directed to the United States and
Britain, titled “How to be an Internee Without Previous Training.” In these
talks, he confirmed, “I never was interested in politics. I'm quite unable to
work up any kind of belligerent feeling.”

In the absence of knowledge about the circumstances that
produced these talks, Wodehouse was decried in Britain. After the liberation of
France in 1944, he returned to New York, where he also mainly lived before the
Second World War began - his pre-war picture of Britain, as presented in his
writing, was preserved. The broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge, who was a MI6
intelligence officer when he encountered Wodehouse after the liberation, later
said he was “a man singularly ill-fitted to live in a time of ideological
conflict, having no feelings of hatred about anyone, and no very strong views
about anything. ... I never heard him speak bitterly about anyone—not even
about old friends who turned against him in distress. Such temperament does not
make for good citizenship in the second half of the Twentieth Century.”

Where does that leave me? When modern-day fascists –
“alt-right” really is just a branding exercise - feel emboldened by the actions
of leaders, you have no choice but to speak out against it but, as usual for
social media, you could be denounced for trying to censor someone to promote
your own views. Plurality of opinion is ideal, but threatening the safety of
others, in order to promote your own agenda, is simply stupid.

People can believe whatever they want, but if you do want to
cut your nose off to spite your face, don’t be surprised if people happy with
their own noses decide to offer you a scalpel – and if you think this will work
instead, trying to sound reasonable will not work either, especially if the
words are not there.